Audiobook · read by volunteers
Day Boy and the Night Girl
George MacDonald (1824–1905)
Read by Laurie Anne Walden · 7 chapters · 1 h 37
About the book
Photogen has grown up in the sunlight, trained as a hunter and bold by day. Nycteris has lived her whole life by lamplight in a tower, and has never seen the sun at all. Both are raised by the witch Watho, who keeps them apart for her own purposes, and each knows only half of the world. When a boy who has never seen the moon meets a girl who has never seen the day, a strange friendship begins, and with it a desperate need to get away from the woman who made them what they are. George MacDonald wrote this fairy tale for young readers, but it has the glow of a parable too, full of light, shadow, courage and wonder. It is short, vivid and easy to love, a story to hear in one sitting after dark.
Introduction
George MacDonald was born in Scotland in 1824 and died in 1905. He trained for the ministry, turned to writing, and became one of the best-loved Victorian authors of fantasy and fairy tales for children and adults alike. His imaginative work later won admiration from many writers who followed him, and its gentle moral seriousness is a large part of its charm.
Day Boy and the Night Girl is a late Victorian fairy tale. Like much of MacDonald’s fiction it works on two levels: a straightforward adventure with a wicked witch, a pair of children and a dramatic escape, and a quieter tale about fear, ignorance and how we come to know what lies beyond our own small world. Its meanings run deeper than the surface story, as is true of the best fairy tales.
This recording runs for about an hour and a half, divided into seven sections that group the book’s chapters together, from the first chapters to the closing ones. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, Laurie Anne Walden.
It is a fine choice for a quiet evening, for reading aloud in spirit to a child, or for anyone who enjoys the older tradition of fairy tale in which the dark is not simply an enemy and the light is not simply safe. Listeners who enjoy Lewis Carroll or Hans Christian Andersen, or who remember the Narnia books fondly, will find a kindred spirit here. MacDonald’s imagination influenced many fantasy writers, and this is one of his most approachable tales, short enough to hear in a single evening.
Public domain
George MacDonald died in 1905: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text